Fugitive Nights(48)

The alarm clock was set. He was prepared for tomorrow. Before going to bed he scooped coffee into the automatic coffee maker and poured water from a plastic bottle into the tank, setting the timer for 5:20 a. M. When he put the plastic bottle back into the cupboard he slammed the cupboard door on his fingers.

He cried out, ran to the sink and held his throbbing fingers under cold water. The blood surfaced black, and spread to the size of a bullet wound. He thought he'd probably lose the fingernail. Jack Graves hoped he could sleep with the pain. He was becoming so clumsy that he wondered if, at age forty-six, he was developing a neurological disorder of some kind. So many accidents.

But he slept less fitfully than usual that night. Somehow, the pain was comforting.

The ten o'clock news hadn't ended by the time Nelson Hareem got home to his bachelor apartment in Indio. Nelson went into the bedroom and took off his T-shirt, then went into his kitchen, the size of a large bathtub, and fixed himself a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. Then he switched channels to CMT, since country music was his only passion outside of police work. While Travis Tritt sang "Put Some Drive in Your Country," Nelson dunked the sandwich into the milk, then watched a commercial for mail-order toothpaste that claimed to give you a smile that movie stars paid thousands of dollars to get. He dunked the peanut butter sandwich again. His ex-girlfriend, Billie, had said it was uncouth to dunk, but he'd grown up dunking and couldn't quit.

Restless, he switched back to the TV news, which was still about the war. The Middle East had always depressed him. He didn't feel a shred of kinship with the people of the region, even those in Lebanon. In fact, Nelson had never known his Lebanese grandfather, who'd died when Nelson's father was still a boy. Nelson felt sort of Bakersfield-Okie like everyone else in his family, though he and his sisters had been mostly raised in San Bernardino after his mother had remarried.

Then Nelson got up to switch off the TV, wishing he could remember to buy batteries for the remote control. That Sony was his other real luxury, next to the Jeep Wrangler that he couldn't afford but had to have.

The aquarium looked okay, but he'd have to change the water soon. He sprinkled some food into it and said, "Hello Ollie, hello Liddy" to his two mongrel goldfish, which he liked better than all the fancy ones they'd tried to sell him.

Nelson thought about reading the issue of Soldier of Fortune he'd bought in the hope of learning something about terrorists now that he might be on the trail of one, but it seemed to be all about people who'd gone fruity over anything cylindrical that belched flame.

It was discouraging to think of trying to drag Lynn Cutter up to Desert Hot Springs the next day, but really, some of the motels up there would be even better bets for a fugitive seeking a remote base of operations. But Desert Hot Springs was several miles from Palm Springs so the guy would need a car, a cold car. Nelson was turning over in his mind the thought of checking car rental offices. The more he thought about it, the better he liked the idea.

By eleven o'clock he was in bed enjoying a fantasy of being interviewed by The Desert Sun after catching the bad guy. In this particular fantasy, the terrorist was trying to plant a plastique explosive on the eighteenth hole of Indian Wells Country Club, where the trophies and checks would be handed out by Bob Hope. Thus, Nelson Hareem was going to single-handedly stop a foreign power from blowing the living shit out of the guy who'd entertained the troops in Saudi Arabia.

The former renter of Nelson's bachelor apartment had tried scratching out a living as a telephone solicitor for anybody that'd pay her a minimum wage, and there was a stack of telephone books in the apartment with listings for most of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, two of the largest counties on earth.

Nelson jumped out of bed, grabbed the bathrobe his ex-girlfriend had given him for his twenty-sixth birthday, and rummaged through the pile until he found the Palm Springs directory. He turned to the yellow pages but was discouraged to see how many listings were devoted to automobile renting and leasing. He should've expected as much in a city that hosts hundreds of thousands of tourists during the season. He tore out the sheaf of pages and put them with -the single page of motel listings A through C that corresponded to the page ripped out of another book by the terrorist.

Nelson spread flat on the coffee table beside the car rental pages. He had no interest in its other side. listed some M's preceding the motel listings. There were modeling agencies, money order services and monument designers.

The fugitive was drinking coffee and studying of the Palm Springs yellow pages. There were only four listings that concerned him on the page, and he'd decided to memorize those listings and dispose of that page he'd torn from the phone book, just as he'd disposed of the red flight bag. Now he had a beautiful blue leather bag that would fit under an airplane seat, and yet was large enough to carry everything he'd need.